


Stumbling Into Faith

by SvenskaFishes



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Non-Binary Frisk, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-28
Updated: 2016-02-28
Packaged: 2018-05-23 19:33:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6127771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SvenskaFishes/pseuds/SvenskaFishes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He stumbled into faith and thought, 'god this is all there is'</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stumbling Into Faith

**Author's Note:**

> I have an inordinate amount of passion for lyric comics. [This lyric comic](http://ask-whitebag.tumblr.com/post/132947021352) is absolutely beautiful and you should go check it out right now. Specifically, the lyrics "he stumbled into faith and thought / god this is all there is" really resonated with me. I'm not really a believer in the Sans-remembers-timelines theory, but _my god_ is it fun to play with to fuel the angst machine. 
> 
> Also, this is a lot more freeform than my other stuff, so approach with caution.

He doesn't believe in any sort of higher power, really, beyond the natural forces at work within the universe. Things he can quantify, calculate, theorize at. Nothing with a brain behind it of course, because gravity doesn't _decide_ to turn itself on and off.

Universal constants.

The only kind of higher power he needs. The only kind that makes sense.

He's aware peripherally that religion is a thing that exists, of course, but it never really appealed to him, or to Papyrus. The delta rune is just a symbol, the prophecy is just a story. The old ragged and water-damaged books on religions that wash down sometimes are just more of the same.

Everything is more of the same. Same stars twinkling above the winding streams of Waterfall, same cavernous ceiling spanning high above the blustery clouds of Snowdin. Same worn-down footpaths in the snow going to the same long-loved places. Same strange feeling of deja-vu that gets more intense every day. Same loving exasperation from Papyrus. Same bad habits only getting worse. Same life.

And then a voice comes from the other side of the door, making him freeze mid-breath and choke in surprise and delight. _"Who is there?"_

And life is not quite as full of sames.

He grips onto this feeling a little desperately, because an entire lifetime of living in the same space with the same people forever has made him a little bit numb, and for once he feels like he's really woken up.

And she asks him to make a promise, and for a moment it feels like some sort of universal tipping point, like everything is about to change, and he doesn't believe in higher powers but if he did he would be shivering all the way from his vertebrae to his phalanges.

He says yes.

* * *

 He's sitting at his sentry station, idly tossing back a couple of ketchup packets when he hears a creak in the distance. Using one slippered foot, he tips himself backwards in his chair until he's falling, knows himself to be somewhere else - to him, everywhere in the Underground exists right next to where he currently is, all he has to do is think about it in the right way -  and lands a couple hundred feet away behind a tree, crouching.

The door creaks open and someone slowly exits, shivering in the sudden cold. It's a human. Clinging to a stick like it's a lifeline. A ribbon curls around ragged brown tufts of hair.

They're wearing a striped shirt. Just a kid. It makes him feel better about all of this, because if he's gonna destroy the Underground's last hopes, he'd rather it be for some dumb kid who doesn't know any better.

They look stoically ahead, and he wonders what happened behind that door. He doesn't bother to fight the urge he's feeling, the urge to see that expression break. He never claimed to be kind or mature.

They whirl around as soon as they hear the crunch of the branch under his foot, but he's gone before they can get any sort of look. And then they're at the bridge, shoulders hunched from cold or fear or maybe even both, and he deepens his voice as far as it will go. "H U M A N."

And, with a little bit of prompting, they turn around.

And they shake his hand.

* * *

 The kid rarely smiles or frowns, but they do Papyrus' puzzles, and that's enough for Sans. If they can see how cool his brother is, they can't be that bad. And he keeps an eye out, just like he'd promised the voice he would. He does as good a job as his lazy procrastinating psyche will let him. He pops by when he can, in the background, and watches them pet dog after dog.

(They kill, sometimes, and he watches the dust mingle in the snow as they drift off to another encounter, and he wonders what's going on in their head because he _has no idea_ , they are so new and unexpressive that any attempts at reading them slide off like fingers on smooth glass, and the lack of this reliable advantage is a punch to the gut)

But even with the dust on their fingers, now streaking Lesser Dog's scruff and trailing long lines on their pant thighs where they tried and failed to wipe it away, he's not that worried about Papyrus. Paps is a natural at being loved, and if the kid can get Greater Dog to play with them Papyrus will be a walk in the park.

(He breathes a sigh of relief, anyway, when Papyrus is breathing hard from exertion and bemoaning his failure and they lower their stick, and they say a few words that get lost on the wind halfway to Sans' hiding spot, and then lift up their sneakered feet to trek onwards to Waterfall)

They're probably getting hungry by now, so he takes them to Grillby's. He takes any chance he can to poke and prod them, find out what makes them tick. He feels his sense of control slip away just a little as they stare at him evenly, edges of thin chapped lips barely twitching. Well, even if they aren't tickled by his jokes, he'll continue making them, he thinks, because at the very least _he_ gets a kick out of it.

(Then they meet Undyne, and he doesn't feel like joking anymore)

* * *

 He knows that that fight is gonna be one of their toughest, but it's the one he can't really supervise from the sidelines. There aren't any good vantage points nearby, and if he makes one wrong move it could reflect badly on Papyrus. No matter how much it would hurt to fail the voice, to break a promise, Papyrus always comes first, has always come first, will come first for as long as Sans is around.

So he crosses his fingers and hopes that the kid has enough determination to see this through. He waits by his Hotland sentry station, pillows his head on his arms, decides a nap is just what he needs to help him regain some equilibrium.

And he wakes up again and again and again and again and again and again

And again

And again

And he can't breathe, conversations stuttering and starting and stopping until he doesn't know where he is, what's happening, can't keep track one instant to the next

And then he's gasping for air at the sentry station, humidity thick in his skull and choking him a little.

What the _hell_.

And the kid is breathing hard, sweating even, rushing past him and _Undyne is right on their heels_ , and this kid looks grimly determined, _what the fucking hell._

He goes home to pore through some of his old stuff in his lab, because that was emphatically _not normal,_ but he makes sure to be there when the kid passes by any of his stalls or stations. Easy to do when you can man them all at once, because they are essentially all the same one, scattered across the Underground as they are. (H'dog?)

Buried in journals and papers, phalanges streaked with lead and ink, he fully emerges a few hours later to pull the kid on a date. Because he's finally found the right data, and he doesn't like what he sees. And it's time to deliver a warning.

(All the sounds in the dining room cease, all heads turn towards him, he can feel the icy tension grow as he breathes out his threat like a confession, bares a part of his soul to drive it home, and the human just stares back)

* * *

 The stained glass windows of the Judgment Hall loom around him. He never liked this place - too many shadows, too much light, too many places to hide. For someone who is already pretty small, this place is unnecessarily huge. He has a job to do, however, and he shuffles a bit as he waits, hands in pockets, shoulders slouched.

They enter, eyes warily narrowed, burnt pan clutched defensively in front of them. Seeing him, they tilt their head inquisitively, the most expressive he's ever seen.

He judges them. Really, makes them judge themself. Easier on him that way. And it's the only thing that really matters in the end.

They head past.

They fight Asgore.

They lose.

He jerks awake in the early morning back in Snowdin.

* * *

 It takes a while to really understand what's happening. It feels like a cloudy vision, at first, like he looked through a thick gauze at all of yesterday. Like it happened in a dream he's halfway to forgetting already. But instincts still come through, he recalls little things that happened even though they didn't, conversations seem repetitive, and it leaves him waiting behind a tree outside a door, already almost convincing himself he's imagined all of it and he's going nuts.

Then it opens and he collapses on his knees in shock.

* * *

 They do the same things, but slightly differently.

It's enough to give him the most spine-tingling case of deja-vu he's ever had. He grits his teeth against the headache, creeping up hard and fast like an oncoming train.

In the end, tired and blank, he climbs with everyone else out past the barrier and up into the sunlight. It's the best feeling he's ever felt, euphoric and content and relieved and if he could cry he might.

Papyrus is midair between ground and sky, leaping with joy and excitement, cape flapping in the surfaceworld breeze when it all disappears

* * *

 He lives the same day over and over. Everyone says and does the same thing. He wonders if they're programmed that way. Maybe the whole universe is just a computer program.

He'll run the simulations when he gets up the energy to care about anything anymore.

(He wonders if time has broken enough yet that he still appears at the Judgment Hall, still says the same thing over and over and over, even though Papyrus is dead again and he's wasting away sprawled out on the couch, waiting to go to sleep forever)

* * *

 (He tries to kill them outside the door one day, just to try it. Just to see if anything different'd happen. He wakes up immediately, feeling dirty and cold all the way down to the marrow of his bones. And the human rises again, their resurrection so commonplace by now that they don't even seem angry or frightened the next time they see him. They are invincible, invulnerable, eternal.)

* * *

 And one day, one same-day, one eternal winding twisting looping day, the human shuffles out of the ruins. Their gait is shambling, their arms are elbow-deep in dust.

And this human, the one he's finally learned to read almost better than he knows himself, is even more blank than before.

They don't care about puzzles.

They don't care about puns.

They care about the toy knife in their hand, swinging it haphazardly at everyone unfortunate enough to get in their path.

And Sans sees it happening before it happens, this strange half-cognition that he's come to understand is from time folding in on itself repeatedly, and does everything he can to talk Papyrus out of it. Papyrus _believes_ , of course, with that painful earnestness that Sans hates suddenly.

Papyrus goes.

Sans tries to stop it, wills himself there in time to take the blow, but space doesn't cooperate. He can feel it, then, the way this path has worn itself down into a sort of permanence, like the grooves in a record.

He's powerless.

There's something almost freeing in that, even though he's still left dusty and mourning a brother who he'll see again tomorrow.

* * *

 The Underground is almost empty by the time he glances at just the right set of numbers; journals and printouts scattered on the floor from where he tossed them when he missed the garbage.

He doesn't know if he can do it, but he knows what needs to be done.

He goes.

The world skips, and skips, and skips, and his hands shake, and in the end it's all for nothing.

But as he lies dead and dying, he manages to cling to life long enough to witness his salvation in the form of a determined little human sacrificing their soul, reaching eagerly for the reset button

and

he

wakes

up

* * *

 He wakes up and he wakes up and he wakes up and he wakes up and he wakes up and he wakes up and he wakes up and he wakes up and he wakes up and he wakes up and he wakes up and he wakes up and he wakes up and he wakes up and he screams

* * *

 They come out of the Ruins. He follows. They turn around at his first word, hand extended, and a thousand other humans follow suit in a thousand timelines past and future extending outwards into an infinity.

* * *

 The stained glass glows.

The temple-like columns rise around them.

This is his church, and it is time to give his higher power what they demand of him.

* * *

 He wakes up and he wakes up and he wakes up

And sometimes he gets to live long enough to almost get through the next day, and those are the best ones because sometimes he gets to feel the morning air on his bones and he thanks the human from the bottom of his soul that he knows what Papyrus' grin looks like in the sunlight, because sometimes it's all that gets him up in the mornings.

And sometimes he's left holding Papyrus' scarf in Snowdin, covered in his dust, and then he wakes up to his brother's voice telling him to come eat breakfast, and he trembles in gratitude that the human is kind enough to grant him this, to give this back. Because they could choose not to.

* * *

 Sans believes in universal constants like gravity. He can alter it, though. He believes in space, but it bends to his will just the same.

And he believes in time.

Most of all, he believes in Frisk. Frisk is benevolent and malevolent, a gentle hand or a sharp knife, but at the end of the day Frisk gives him everything he prays for. He couldn't ask for a kinder god.

Frisk is the most constant thing in the universe.

* * *

 In a snowy forest, a door opens. A skeleton stands outside, waiting, watching as a human slips through and it shuts with a firm clang. Not acknowledging his presence, they stare straight ahead and make their way through the woods.

He trails along behind them like a tired little puppy at the heel of its master. At the edge of the chasm, at the gate leading out to a thousand million possibilities, they pause, waiting, and before he can even take a breath to let the words tumble out, they turn.

They extend their hand, like a benediction, like salvation. And he drops to his knees in worship as he reaches back, dying of thirst in the desert of their eternity.


End file.
